Corning secretly debuted Gorilla Glass 4 on the Galaxy Alpha

Corning has just revealed its new display-safeguarding tech debuted on the handset months before the firm even revealed Gorilla Glass 4 was existential.

Cliff Hund, Corning’s GM and President for East Asia, said: “Corning spends a great deal of time collaborating with Samsung to recommend solutions that will continually improve their device design and performance.”

“Device makers want to go thinner without sacrificing damage resistance. Samsung is not only meeting these requirements, but is on the cutting edge of smartphone design.”

He then added: “The Galaxy Alpha is the culmination of our close collaboration with Samsung.”

Samsung launched its Alpha handset back in September, marking the firm’s much longed-for attempt at premium handset aesthetics.

For some reason though, the South Korean firm decided not to out the fact that its metal-trim handset was toting then-unannounced Gorilla Glass.

Corning officially unveiled Gorilla Glass 4 just last month, talking up the new (or so we thought) fare as capable of surviving 80 per cent of face-down drops from a one meter height.

James R. Steiner, Senior VP and General Manager at Corning, said: “Corning Gorilla Glass has outperformed competing materials such as soda-lime glass and other strengthened panels, since it was introduced in 2007, and we’re always innovating to push the limits of what glass can do.”

“With Gorilla Glass 4, we have focused on significantly improving protection against sharp contact damage, which is the primary reason that mobile devices break.”